UNESCO Director-General's Report on the Safety of Journalists and the Danger of Impunity

Three regions recorded the highest numbers of killings in 2016-2017: Arab States, Latin America and the Caribbean and Asia and the Pacific. In 2017, killings in Asia and the Pacific surpassed those that occurred in the Arab States. In both years, less than 10% of overall killings took place in Africa, Western Europe and North America, and Central and Eastern Europe, respectively.

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Killings of journalists appear to be decreasing since 2015. This trend may be contested in 2018, with more than 80 killings condemned by the UNESCO Director-General as of October 2018. (UNESCO observatory of killed journalists)

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In 2017, UNESCO recorded the highest number of killed women journalists (11 victims) since the Organization started reporting on killings of journalists in 2006. Men continue to represent an overwhelming majority (86% in 2017) of victims of fatal attacks against journalists.

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In 2017, almost half of the killed journalists (45%) were working in television outlets while in 2016, those working in this sector represented 34% of all victims. Among the TV journalists killed in 2016-2017, the majority were killed in countries currently experiencing conflict (55 out of 71 killed TV journalists).

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In 2017, local journalists represented 90% of all killed journalists and in 2016, 94%. In both years, less than one in 10 of the journalists killed was an international reporter. Of the 14 foreign victims in 2016-2017, half were killed in countries experiencing conflict.

Compared to media staff, freelance journalists are widely considered more vulnerable, since they often lack adequate protection and support from the media organization(s) they are working with. Over the two-year period, 34 out of 182 journalists killed were freelancers, accounting for 19% of all fatalities.

In 2017 for the first time in recent years, more journalists (55%) were killed in countries with no armed conflict than in countries experiencing armed conflict. This trend may possibly be explained by the absence of new armed conflicts and less journalists reporting from long-running conflict areas.

While in the last four years the response rate by Member States had been steadily increasing, from 27% in 2014 to a peak of 74% in 2017, 2018 was marked by a drop in the response rate, with only 64% of Member States providing a reply.

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Of the 1010 cases condemned by the Director-General between 2006 and 2017, 115 cases were resolved according to the information provided by the national authorities of the country. This represents an overall resolution rate of 11%.

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